Walshy’s Blog: Euro goals and the new season

What a tournament it’s been for Sean St Ledger – the first active Leicester City player to score in a major international tournament. When it first went in I thought it was an own goal, but what a fantastic moment for him! Unfortunately the efforts were in vain as they crashed out of Euro 2012, but the team lost both matches against stiff competition! It’s great for Leicester City to have players competing at such a level, I certainly couldn’t imagine how scoring a goal at that level feels.

As for England, I’d certainly expect them to qualify, I’m quite confident in that. We had a good result against France and the win against Sweden will have really boosted confidence. Hope the team can take that into the knock-out stages of the tournament! As I said, playing at this level is fantastic experience for Sean and hopefully he’ll be able to bring that back with him to City next season.

Before Euro 2012 began I had tipped Holland to win it, but now I think it’s a 2 horse race between Germany and Spain. Spain look phenomenal and I really can’t see any other team matching them or Germany. Muzzy’s actually had a bet on Russia winning it, so you never know, there could be a surprise.

The fixtures are out tomorrow! I love it when the fixtures come out, running over the important match days and which teams fall when. The 1st draw for the League Cup is already out too, with a game against Torquay away. That’s got a buzz going for the new season, as soon as the first game gets announced fans start to get excited about what lies ahead. Obviously the League Cup is one that’s close to my heart and it’s always nice to get a little cup run going to build confidence at the start of the season. It will be a stern test going down to Torquay. They’re bound to be up for it and will be looking to cause an upset but hopefully we can grab a win and take that momentum into the league games! The start of the season is such an important time as it sets the tone for the fans for the season, start well and they’ll be behind you straight away! Historically, we don’t have the best record of starting with wins but here’s hoping we get a good fixture to start us off on!

The other big story this week has been Matt Mills and his proposed transfer away from the club. Did we pay over the odds for him? Obviously he fell out of favour with Nigel so it depends now on what we can recoup. I can’t see us getting the £5 million back that we paid for him, and obviously rumours that Bolton are offering only £1.5 million are not good! It doesn’t look like he is going to feature in Nigel’s plans so the big aim now is to get back as much of the transfer fee as we can. I believe Neil Lennon is still interested in taking him north of the border, so it should be an interesting month or two. Nigel’s got quite a job ahead of him. Obviously he inherited Sven’s squad last season and now is his chance to firmly put his stamp on it. He’ll certainly be looking now at who he can offload and bring in. We made big money signings last year and not all of them paid off, as Mills at £5 million shows.